My Gypsy Song

Found this old translation of mine of a song by the great Russian bard, Vladimir Vysotsky:

In the dream come yellow lights,

in the dream, I yell till I'm hoarse:

"Hold on! Hold on! It won't seem so bad

once the night has run its course."

Even then, though, nothing seems right:

where is the joy and the laughter?

Either you smoke before breakfast is done

or you drink on the morning after.

In the tavern: green bottles of vodka,

white napkins that have been there an age:

a heaven for jokers and scroungers,

though I feel like a bird in a cage.

In the church, there's a stink: the deacons

are burning incense in the half-light.

No, even in church nothing seems right,

nothing seems right, it's not right.

So I rush before anything happens

up a mountain, in full retreat.

At the top of the mountain an alder stands

and below it, a cherry tree.

If only some ivy had covered the slope

perhaps it would ease my plight;

it's odd, but something is missing…

no, nothing seems right, it's not right.

Then I'm in a field by a riverbank—

light as hell, but of God, not a sign.

In the untouched field of cornflowers

a long road beckons to the horizon.

And along the road is a forest,

it's dense, full of witches and hags,

and there at the end of the road that's long

is a chopping block and an axe.

Somewhere horses are dancing to a beat—

unwillingly, but not without grace.

On the road, nothing seems right—

at the end, it's even more the case.

And not in the church, nor the tavern

is there anything good or divine.

Oh no, it's just not right, my friends,

it's not right, oh friends of mine.

Considering good and evil

Death had just polished off the last sponge-finger
when he had an idea for a verse: chewing the dirt beneath
his nails he scribbled the words down lazily—or spontaneously,
whichever way you prefer it—as he looked out
over the clean imagined fields of Hampstead Heath.

Death, of course, had absorbed the pacifist lessons
from the poems of World War One; some of the lines
he’d even memorised, and the one about coughing up blood
in a green sea of gas he liked so much that he’d do it
at birthdays and weddings, at Christmas, on Valentine's.

Leafing through the paper’s pages wearily,
the Sunday news wasn’t all that he’d hoped
in the first days of a fresh campaign. No elitist,
it wasn’t for nothing that they called Death the Great Leveller.
But nor did he think himself unpatriotic, or a defeatist,

for though he’d violently opposed the war of liberation,
he’d supported it too, wishing the troops well: all views
to him were an equally valid expression of subjective
experience. (Later, behind the gauze of a confessional,
he’d earwig a soldier’s session for strategies or clues.)

So if Death is a tank commander, he’s also at home
in jeans and slippers, or propped up on a study chair.
That’s why, when he entered the ancient city, it was no surprise
as he removed his goggles and dusted himself off
that it was his own strong hand that shook his welcome there.

After all, wasn’t he born here, where mum and dad
first pinched the fruit from the master’s private trees?
That landed them in no end of trouble—ie with sex
and death (a "mixed blessing"), an eternity of hard labour;
but also little naughty Cain, and Abel, so eager to please.

How shabby Eden was looking now—
and a lot less lush than he remembered; for all that,
he noted the hilltop palace he’d somehow managed to wangle,
complete with Olympic-size pool and good views
over the arid southern plains, the ascetic Ziggurat.

Now Death stands up, scratches his bony behind,
looks in the mirror. Sensing he’s lost some weight
he adds vitamins to a mental post-it. Into the absence
where moments before had been the last sponge-finger
he conjures up a new last piece on a simple stoneware plate

and, scoffing the cake down greedily, he sweeps
the crumbs to the floor so his wife won’t see them;
returns to the papers, where the problem of good
and evil just makes his eyes glaze over into two marbles:
these roll off down Skull Hill, looking out for a stratagem.

(April 2005)

Cheerful rebel

Cheerful and playfully arrogant,
done up in his boots and his good felt hat,
the slanting leaves that shared his accent
in the wood were smiling like sharpened axes
as he made past the barn and the sheepfold,
his weapon slung over his shoulder
as if he was heading to work in the field,
as per usual, though he was heading for the war.

Yet May fell within weeks and September
went AWOL; now he can’t for the life
of him, as he peers in his bag, remember
the ferns that waved him off: one loaf
of bread is left, and the devious enemy
is taking pot shots from ridges in the hills,
so he can't see their faces—if they have them.
Also, his boots pinch and his hat has holes.

So he crawls on his belly, he's flat on his face
on a slope of crumbling sand and mud
as the clattering hoof-beats of riders race
past above him on a raised dirt road,
and he’s holding his arms in a pincer
about his head, as a child, for camouflage;
he peeks up the mud-bank, where the air
and earth split his vision, half-and-half.

The sky still seems hopeful—if empty—
though the way out leads through a marsh.
He rubs at his side where the hardy
shoots of marram grass dug harshly
into his ribs, and he thinks—on rolling over,
once the riders are out of range—
"I would have laughed when I was younger:
now I just shake and cringe."

A ravenous wolf troop will sweep
through the countryside, ravaging hedge
and crop. Will the copse get the chop
along with the tree of knowledge
of good and evil? To use for another spear
shaft? To lighten a while the dismal mood
around that evening's pitiful campfire?
To ruin the gloom with the surplus firewood?

(Dawlish, 2001)